I wish the US had spent its efforts and resources towards completely eliminating the Taliban as an institution and ideology rather than kind of shoveling money around to opportunists with no skills for organizing people or maintaining loyalty. I think what happened instead was that the US was afraid of sparking a new movement that would eventually operate outside of its control so it funded what it thought it could control: rich assholes.

And now the religious fascists are back in charge. Wheee.

Just because they’re conservative doesn’t mean they’re publishing falsehoods. Just be on the lookout for bias, which you should for all media.

For example, the oppression of women in Afghanistan is probably being reported on more by conservative sources not because they are against the oppression of women, but because they’re hawks who disagreed with leaving Afghanistan, and there’s probably some anti-muslim sentiment motivating it as well. Likewise liberal media sources are probably ignoring it because leaving Afghanistan the way America did was largely considered to be a disaster which was finalized under a Democratic administration, and for all their talk of caring about women they did basically abandon half the population of an entire nation. It would probably not help their side of the current election cycle to shine light on the catastrophic fallout of one of Biden’s major international policy decisions.

I hope these IDF soldiers wake up. You can’t kill people without killing part of yourself.

This is basically Objectivism.

Wouldn’t it be cool if people who committed violent acts couldn’t actually be traumatized by those acts if they were unambiguously immoral. If people who did Evil were always consciously aware of it. If there was a moral order to the universe manifested in our bodies and in our works. One could then be sure that anyone who committed an act of evil and reported being traumatized by it was really lying.

Everyone has a choice.

There’s no such thing as a “correct” people to erase.

I hate Twitter, but I’m getting to the point where I want it to get better because if bluesky gets many more members we’re just gonna have Twitter again.

One thing I liked about the Muskification of Twitter was the scattering.

I’m pretty sure I’ve lived on less than this in inflation adjusted dollars.

Oh I don’t think it’s a problem for Discord, but when it comes to software projects specifically I find the reliance on Discord frustrating because of its non-public orientation. If I’m having an issue I’d far rather search for a solution on a public wiki, bug report system, or forum than sign up for one more Discord server.

Far more than should tbh. Too many little game mods will have a Discord for questions and reporting issues rather than using their GitHub or a forum.

I think you’re giving the guy too much credit. Sometimes things are as they seen. He just didn’t like the moderation scheme on Twitter, made a gesture buying it, fumbled a little bit and overbid, then after having been forced to acquire it tried to turn it into something closer to what he wanted it to be.

Masnick’s post is well put, but also a disturbing reminder of how much power nation-states can exert over the Internet.

Because they’re also rich. Laws are for the poors.

Public micro blogging overall is a bane, so yes.

The difference between clearly documenting features, and hiding or removing them.

First time I saw a Zoomer do that it hurt my soul.

This is actually a good take. Kids aren’t miniature adults, they’re kids. They’re not helpless or useless, but neither are they fully morally and emotionally developed. They need guidance. Plenty of adults can’t responsibly handle internet access. I survived early onilne porn and gore and social media, but it’s not like any of it benefited me in a meaningful way.

Some folks have an attitude that’s like “I touched hot stoves and I learned better”, but that’s far from ideal.

To be fair, at least as of this moment his prior post says Google is “manufacturing consent for”, not “actively supporting”. I believe that the former can be the latter, but is not necessarily the latter.

I feel like maybe research on medical implants like this should be done by the state.

It’s more likely there not because the employer wanted it, but because the union demanded it.